Good action. Incomplete coverage.
1. Ms. Sheldon Gardner, the reporter who attended meeting did not write the story, which was farmed out to another reporter, Mr. Jared Keever, who was not there, and did NOT share his byline with Ms. Gardner. That's so wrong. Newsroom sexism?
2. No quotes from Tom Reynolds, who helped direct the St. Augustine Beach City Commission's attention to the right result. Why not?
3. Is there a GateHouse style manual forbidding reporters from quoting community activists? Please post your style manual.
4. By relying on handouts and failing to quote activists, The Record "censors the news at its source," as investigative reporter Jack Anderson once said.
5. As JFK once said about the press, "I'm reading it more and liking it less."
6. To Record reporters: I see you taking copious notes, then writing 586 word stories. Why don't you quote whistleblowers and activists? Animus? Bias? Fear of disapproval from advertisers, editors, publishers and politicians? Time to sign union cards and join your colleagues at the Jacksonville Florida Times-Union.
7. Do your jobs, "without fear or favor." Now.
Beach commissioners still mulling medical marijuana questions
By Jared Keever
Posted at 2:01 AM
Updated at 6:26 AM
With a medical marijuana dispensary set to open soon in St. Augustine, and county officials having banned the businesses in unincorporated parts of St. Johns County, the last local jurisdiction to decide permanently whether or not the new businesses will be allowed in the area is St. Augustine Beach.
It’s a topic the city’s commissioners discussed at their Monday night meeting in anticipation of the November sunset of the moratorium they placed on dispensaries last year.
That happens on Nov. 6 according to a memo to commissioners from City Manager Max Royle that also points out they need to make a decision on the matter soon in order to have a new ordinance in place by then.
After Monday’s discussion, it appears that is unlikely to happen.
All commissioners were able to muster at their most recent meeting was a consensus to direct city staff to explore the topic and any restrictions or regulations they can place on a dispensary looking to open within the island community.
The commissioners voted last year for the one-year moratorium on the dispensaries after lawmakers implemented a constitutional amendment that voters approved in 2016 greenlighting the use of medical marijuana and expanding the list of businesses that could open dispensaries in the state.
The Beach commissioners on Monday gave staff 90 days to gather additional information and look at what other cities around the state have done. That’s a timeline that pushes the topic to October when the commissioners are expected to extend the moratorium already in place, only to cancel it later once a decision is reached.
The current state law prohibits cities from putting restrictions on the businesses that are any stricter than rules applied to pharmacies, but does allow jurisdictions to ban the dispensaries entirely.
That is what the county has done.
The City of St. Augustine has not, and in early June the Planning and Zoning Board there gave the final go ahead for the company Trulieve to open a dispensary in the strip mall at 2303 N. Ponce de Leon Boulevard.
Plenty of other cities have taken the same path.
Information available through the Florida Department of Health’s website shows that companies have opened 43 dispensaries in 28 cities around the state.
And The Miami Herald reported last month that, a year and a half after the amendment passed, 91,000 Floridians are buying 56 pounds of marijuana a week under the orders of 1,400 doctors.
According to other information also available from the Department of Health at least 14 of those doctors are operating in St. Johns County and listed on the website as “Qualified Medical Marijuana Ordering Physicians.”
St. Augustine Beach Police Chief Robert Hardwick told The Record on Friday that, although he supported the initial moratorium, he is not opposed to medical marijuana use and doesn’t see any real problem with allowing the businesses in the city in the limited areas where they would be allowed to operate.
His initial hesitation, he said, was that he didn’t want his small jurisdiction to be a “testing ground” for cities across the state.
“There were a lot of things that were unclear,” Hardwick said of his thinking at the time.
On Monday, Hardwick told commissioners he could go either way with extending the moratorium or moving forward with allowing the dispensaries, but suggested that from a law enforcement perspective he didn’t see a huge problem with them given an ongoing opioid crisis that is threatening and taking lives locally and across the state and country.
“I think, honestly, this is the least of our problems,” he said.
Hardwick cited similar statistics as those from the Department of Health and reminded commissioners that what the dispensaries are looking to sell is medicine, legally prescribed, in the form of oils, concentrates or liquids.
“We are not buying bags of marijuana,” he said. “That’s not what’s going on.”
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